In 2004, Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, discussing his position on funding for Mideast military operations, infamously explained to an audience, “I actually did vote for (the funding) before I voted against it.” Kerry’s craven attempt to have it both ways on a controversial issue cemented his reputation as the quintessential “flip-flopper” and likely contributed to his loss in that year’s presidential race.

But even that historic example of shameless political pliability pales next to the antics of Sen. Josh Hawley, whose various backflips and contortions on issues that affect his constituents should earn him a spot on the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.

The latest: Hawley filed legislation last week to roll back devastating cuts to Medicaid and rural hospital funding that congressional Republicans — including Hawley— voted in less than two weeks earlier.

It was the Missouri Republican’s second 360-degree repositioning on the issue. Hawley for months this spring made national headlines by vowing to stand up against his own party on behalf of his most vulnerable constituents and prevent the gutting of Medicaid, the government-run health care system for the poor.

Then this month, he voted to gut it.

Now he offers legislation to un-gut it.

In other words, Hawley, in true Kerry-esque fashion, was against hurting the poor in order to lower taxes for the rich before he was in favor of it. But don’t worry, because now he’s against it again.

As of this writing, we haven’t heard whether Hawley has yet offered a bill to repeal his bill that would repeal the Medicaid cuts that he voted for.

To anyone who has watched Hawley’s career, this political pirouetting should look familiar.

He won his 2016 election for Missouri attorney general with a memorable ad bashing ladder-climbing politicians for “using one office to get another.” Then, 10 months into his term, he announced he was running for the U.S. Senate.

Hawley unseated Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2018 with a strategy of presenting himself as the “true” champion of protecting health care accessibility for Missourians. This at the same time that, as attorney general, he was pursuing a national Republican lawsuit to invalidate the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which, had it succeeded, would have rendered possibly a million Missourians uninsurable.

In 2023, Hawley again made a not-typical-Republican show out of walking the picket lines in support of striking autoworkers. This after a career of consistently backing his party’s anti-labor stances on the minimum wage and unionization rights.

Hawley has long engaged in heated anti-corporate rhetoric unusual for his party — part of his faux-populist schtick. Yet this month, when push came to shove-poor-people-off-the-Medicaid-rolls, he voted for President Trump’s misnamed “Big Beautiful Bill” of tax cuts for the rich at the expense of everyone else.

Like every Republican who supported that bill, the estimated $3 trillion cost over the next decade makes a mockery of every word Hawley has ever uttered about “fiscal responsibility.”

Hawley’s legislation to roll back the Medicaid cuts he just voted for is dead on arrival in the Senate, but that doesn’t matter. The whole point is to allow him to continue masquerading as a populist fighter for the little guy while actually coddling the rich just like the rest of his party.

As with all of Hawley’s flip-flops, his most recent came with a sanctimonious explanation in which he presents his self-serving shape-shifting as something noble. “Now is the time to prevent any future cuts to Medicaid from going into effect,” Hawley really, truly said in a statement announcing his bill.

Now is the time? Now, rather than — oh, say — before the cuts were approved with only Republican votes, including his?

Signs persist that Hawley is still eyeing a presidential run in 2028. Trying to be all things to all voters is his apparent strategy. Ask John Kerry how well that’s likely to go.

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